By Terrence Thomas
Hunter Domanski was walking down an aisle last month at a national warehouse store in Baton Rouge, La., with LSU beach volleyball teammates Kristen Nuss and Ashlyn Rasnick-Pope when the gut punch was delivered via social media.
The NCAA, the governing body of intercollegiate athletics, announced on March 12 that it had canceled the seasons and championships for its remaining winter and spring sports because of a coronavirus pandemic.
LSU, with former New Braunfels High School standout Domanski playing an integral role, was ranked No. 1 in the nation. The national-championship tournament was scheduled for May 1-3 in Gulf Shores, Ala.
“It really was kind of tough finding out your season was canceled in a tweet,” Domanski said. “We were in the frozen food section, and we just left our (shopping) basket and went outside and sat in the car and cried. It was not a pretty sight.”
The decision brought the Tigers’ promising season and legitimate hopes of winning a landmark national championship to an end. LSU was poised to become the first non-West Coast school to win a title in the sport’s five-year history. UCLA and Southern California each has won two crowns.
LSU (12-2) was riding an 11-match winning streak, including triumphs over No. 16 TCU, No. 17 Arizona, No. 5 Hawaii and two-time defending national champion UCLA (twice), when play was halted. One of the wins vs. UCLA came before a school-record crowd of more than 4,200.
Making matters worse, the Tigers had came within a point of playing for the national championship in 2019, and used the heartbreak of the squandered opportunity as motivation.
“Even before I got to college, I knew that 2020 was our fairytale year,” said Domanski, who this season had a 10-4 record and won her final seven matches. “The stars aligned. We had all the right pieces and all the right players. It’s just going to be a guess in the dark if we have another shot at a national championship.”
For now, Domanski will have to wait a year to play her final beach season and see if she and the Tigers can claim the top prize. Like most athletes in spring sports, Domanski was granted another year of eligibility by the NCAA because of the cancellation. She plans, though, to use the extra year toward playing indoor volleyball after concluding her beach career.
Domanski was far from the only former area volleyball athlete to feel the coronavirus’ impact.
Seven teams in the top 20 rankings — No. 6 USC (Smithson Valley’s Maja Kaiser), No. 11 Stetson (Smithson Valley’s Lauren Domel), No. 12 Florida Atlantic (Boerne Champion’s Courtney Moon), No. 15 TCU (Johnson City’s Bella Swafford), No. 16 Long Beach State (Jourdanton’s Makenzie Griffin) and No. 18 Georgia State (Smithson Valley’s Bekah Brodbeck) — have former area players on their rosters. No. 13 Florida International is coached by Rita Buck-Crockett, a Marshall graduate and former two-time U.S. Olympian. Houston Baptist, which includes Reagan graduate Tori Hinojosa, received honorable mention in the rankings.
Texas A&M-Kingsville, which won the AVCA Small College Beach Championship in 2018 and was runner-up a year ago, appeared to be shaping up for another run at a title when play ended. The Javelinas had split their last six matches while playing a schedule heavy with Division I opponents, including notching a 4-1 win vs. Nebraska. Former area players Macy Berg (Smithson Valley), Kailey Estrada (Reagan), Grace Gettys (New Braunfels), Tenley Housler (Smithson Valley), Shelby Tate (New Braunfels) and Shelby Williams (New Braunfels Canyon) are on the roster.
“I think that’s really the saddest part of it — you just don’t get to finish,” said Hinojosa, who was granted another season but was leaning toward not playing, of the sudden end to the season. “I have woken up before, and thinking I overslept my alarm or something, and I woke up in a panic. You calm down and you go, ‘OK, no one’s leaving the house.’ You work all that time to get to the season and it’s cut off. But who could see this coming?”
Griffin certainly didn’t. She remembered being in the Long Beach State weight room and looking at a television when the NBA announced it was suspending its season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. Griffin figured the rest of the beach season might be played without fans in attendance as a precaution.
It wasn’t, however, until Griffin arrived at Los Angeles International Airport for a flight to Texas, and saw passengers wearing masks and gloves, that she grasped the ramifications.
“It was just a shock,” said Griffin, who played two indoor seasons each at Texas Lutheran University and Angelo State and has two seasons of eligibility remaining for beach competition after she graduated in 3 1/2 years. “I was like, ‘Whoa, this is real.’ It was kind of a reality check. It felt like the world just kind of stopped, like it didn’t feel real.”